Bonjourno from ND... the place where coaches go to die

Hey all-

I'm not sure how many of you are real into college football but I must refer to my institution by its most recent fame, no? (also, don't be deceived- I don't know more than 3 words of italian and I mainly use them to woo women...

A little background on me: a year and a half ago I first stepped onto Notre Dame's campus, the place where I was to not only learn about literature and science and philosophy but about how to be an athlete. In HS I was, to be brief, an uber-nerd (thou not socially inept). I'm not sure how it happened, but 2 months later I was sitting on this torture machine called an ergometer (aka rowing machine) and pulling decent scores. Over the year my watts probably tripled, my shoulders expanded by 2 in, my waist went in by 1 in, and my legs gained about 10 pounds of muscle while my fat percentage was halved. We worked pretty damn hard. It was fun.

About two months ago I read an article about illegal road races in downtown chicago (I live in LaGrange) and suddenly my curiousity and budding technolust for a good road bike exploded into a need for speed. I am purchasing a 2000 used s-works road frame with full ultegra thats big enough for my 6'4'' frame. The main reason for this purchase is a new and fun way to cross train long duration (2 hr plus because 2 hours on an erg is as fun as having your arse scraped off with a rusty spoon) low-mid HR pieces. Although I have become more and more confident that rowing which focuses so much on leg strength will put me into the shape after winter training not just to race 2k in a boat but criteriums on alumninum.

My plans for the next few months include half a million more erg meters, great racing particularly at SIRAS and the Dad Vail, sunday bike rides from south bend to lake michigan and every state park inside 70 miles, commuting from lagrange to lincon park downtown for rowing practice with the LPBC tuesdays, thursdays and saturdays of the summer, and deciding whether I want to try triathalons or straight up bike racing in chicago on my off weekends. Did I mention that I love to compete? Teehee.

I'm sure thats more background than most of you really care about. I have already benifited greatly from roaming the forums here and I am amazed at how willing seemingly the whole community is to help each other. If any of you ride in the south bend or chicago area and want to fill me in on some of the better rides, get me psyched up for races in chitown, or if you are another rower (former?) please write. Also, I need some good *cheap* shoes and a decent (polar s510 anyone?) HR/cyclocomputer so any technical advice on those would be great. Oh, AND (you can stop reading at any point now) if anyone has any computer files on bike maintenance that they want to email to me: creilly1@nd.edu it would be much appreciated.

Ha... the correct pronunciation for the University which is located in Indiana is the first by custom. The french pronunciation of the words "our mother" (du loc- of the lakes) that the university was named after is the latter.